Media Musings, Take 5

This doesn't bode well for the future of journalism, to say nothing of the First Amendment. Most high school students think freedom of the press has gone too far. According to a USA Today survey, one in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted -- even supporting the notion of a government having to approve headlines before they run.

No wonder younger viewers gravitate toward Fox News, where the White House gets to pre-approve all the stories.

In all honesty, that is some very troubling shit. Just a cursory remembrance of great American journalism -- Nellie Bly's muckraking, Edward R. Murrow exposing Joe McCarthy, the Pentagon Papers, Woodward and Bernstein and the Watergate scandal -- and you've gotta wonder ... is our nation in seriously so much trouble that we're breeding a generation of wannabe sheep?

Let the fleecing commence.

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So the media scuttlebutt (heh heh, I said butt) now indicates that Jon Stewart is a more likely candidate to replace the increasingly cantankerous old fart Andy Rooney (hallelujah!) on "60 Minutes" than he is to have a role in a post-Rather "CBS Evening News."

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Meanwhile, David Letterman finally returned from vacation to present the real eulogy of the great Johnny Carson and wipe out the bitter aftertaste of Jay Leno's perfunctory tribute last week. Out of Focus has a tremendous piece on Dave's farewell to Johnny, which began with Letterman doing a monologue consisting solely of jokes that Carson had written over the past several months.
It was a classy and fitting salute.

Later, Dave mused on Johnny Carson's enduring popularity:

"'The Tonight Show' didn't really become 'The Tonight Show' until Johnny Carson started to host it. And he created the template for that show, and everybody else who's doing a show, myself included, we're all kind of secretly doing Johnny's 'Tonight Show.' And the reason we're all doing Johnny's 'Tonight Show' is because you think, 'Well, if I do Johnny's 'Tonight Show,' maybe I'll be a little like Johnny, and people will like me more. But it sadly doesn't work that way. If you're not Johnny, you're wasting your time. Really everything -- the band, the chairs, the desk, the announcer -- it's all because we just want to be a little bit more like Johnny."

Check out "The Late Show" highlight of Carson's various appearances on the Letterman show.